March 2018

The effects of childhood trauma used to be seen as mostly psychological, but now we know there’s more to the story. In this video I talk about the problem of brain dis-regulation, and why learning to get “re-regulated” can jumpstart your recovery from Childhood PTSD. See the post here!

On the other side of addiction, or a long, shitty toxic relationship, or an exceptionally consuming and draining job, one of the things we commonly hear people say is “I finally got myself back,” or “I finally feel like the old me again,” or another expression of the same sentiment. It’s almost inevitable that when lost in one of these situations you become so consumed by it that the person you once were ceases to exist. That person is simply bowled over and absorbed by the relentless...

A new study conducted by researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the Census Bureau, finds that in 99 percent of neighborhoods in the United States, black boys earn less in adulthood than white boys who come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. This undermines the widely-held belief that class, not race, is the most fundamental predictor of economic outcomes for children in the U.S. The study looked at racial disparities in income over generations by looking at de-identified data from 20...

When Kelli Kelley awoke from her C-section 17 years ago, having delivered her son after just 24 weeks of pregnancy, her husband gave her a Polaroid of their baby. He was tiny, underdeveloped, eyes still fused shut, with translucent skin covered in fine hair, and lying in a sea of medical equipment and lines. To Kelley, he looked like a baby bird. Cut to her first visit to the neonatal intensive-care unit ( nicu ) to meet him: a cacophony of beeping machines, harsh lighting,...

The portion of youth in foster care who are eventually reunited with their biological families has been plummeting in New York City, according to a Chronicle of Social Change review of data from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). The city reunified 68 percent of the children who exited foster care in 2010. By 2016, 53 percent of exiting youth went back to their parents. But while the idea of fewer children returning home sounds worrisome, ACS officials say it’s due to...

When Francis Pearman was studying at Vanderbilt, he and a fellow graduate student noticed a striking phenomenon in Nashville: White, affluent families were moving into low-income neighborhoods without sending their children to the neighborhood schools. “We were really curious to see what that relationship looked like at the national level,” said Pearman, now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. When he and that student, Walker Swain, looked at national data , a pattern emerged. The...

In the first part of a weeklong series about bullying , Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson speaks with Dorothy Espelage ( @DrDotEspelage ), professor of psychology at the University of Florida, and Nadine Connell ( @nmconnell ), director of the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, to look at whether bullying is connected to other kinds of violence. "It really is this continuum of perpetration," Espelage says of bullies. "It's not just that bullying is a...

Natalie* was excited to begin seeing her therapist. "I didn't go to see him because I was at a low ebb," she tells me. "It was the opposite. It was five years after beginning my transition, I finally had a semi-stable income and home life. I decided to invest in therapy and try to address some of my issues, which had been going back to my teens and before." Natalie was 26 years old when she started the sessions. For more than a decade she had suffered from a debilitating eating disorder that...

Among the 8 solutions offered for reducing health care costs in a February white paper by the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute is the recommendation to meaningfully address the impacts of adverse childhood experiences . Childhood trauma is correlated with poor health outcomes – including early death. Early interventions to mitigate its effects are critical. Many studies show that childhood adversity is correlated with adult morbidity and mortality. Adverse childhood experiences...

Hi everyone! I am interviewing men and women for the book I am writing, Conversations that Matter: Life Lessons Learned through Listening. The attached is a request for stories for my book - no video will be taken, simply conversation. I would be grateful if you could share the attached as much as you can! Thank you! Much love and gratitude, Leslie Leslie Peters RN

Life is hard. “In this world you WILL have trouble,” Jesus said. The ability to successfully face the hardships that will inevitably come to us will determine our level of satisfaction, joy, and peace. Resilience isn’t just a desirable trait, it’s absolutely essential. And, it turns out that scripture has a lot to say about this essential quality for successful living. There are many passages we could examine to illustrate the point, but the letter from James is one of my favorites. Eugene...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday called for a special session of the Legislature to pass a $100 million school safety plan. The package includes grants for schools to enhance building security, an increased focus on trauma-informed care, stricter reporting requirements for bullying incidents and threats of violence and efforts to increase coordination between schools and law enforcement. "No child, parent, or teacher should ever have to feel unsafe in school," Walker said in a...